Being here in Corsica is a mystical experience. Waking up to the stunning views, making music and radio for most of the day, and sitting down chatting to Gibsy Rhodes on his own turf, Kingdom Signal Studios is one of the most inspiring musical adventures I have been on to date. Tonight we do our new release ‘One Summer…’ live on radio for the first time. Its a live gig in Gibsy’s modest home studio, surrounded by keyboards, a few mixers, some vintage radio gear and a friendly cat called Topaz who purrs like a combine harvester and has a liking for chewing wires – mind the cat kids!

The live session is powered as I said by modest equipment. Gibsy is no geek. He does not walk around with a calculator working out delay alogrithms. There is no music production software as such, no digital workstations on heavy duty computers and no endless discussions on what does what better or worse. His musical philosophy is simple “it does it for me, thats the sound I like, thats the art I make”.

Gibsy is a joy to work with live. He just labours on the keyboards mixing and blending those notes and ideas and the live shows on radio in this sanctuary up on a mountainside in a small village called Corbara will be magic.

Radio brings people together, it always and always will. Haji Mike in Cyprus linked up with Gibsy Rhodes aka Kingdom Signal in the summer of 2014 via Versionist Radio. Gibsy wanted to do a Haji Mike Special so he requested a few tunes. This led to an invite to Haji Mike to join the station, which happened shortly afterwards. Versionist was also known as the ‘Village Radio’ and would later transmute into ‘OuttaMiYard Radio’ where people from different locations around the world switch studios every couple of hours like as one Reggae/Dub Radio Marathon. Radio also brings people together through music and is a vital media for musicians as a platform to showcase their creations. Haji Mike realized this when he started releasing independent music in 1990 via London. ‘The first time I did a radio session for Andy Kershaw I was over the moon. In fact Kershaw was the first person to play ‘Stavroulla’ one of my early releases in Cyprus’ says Haji Mike ‘ and that concept of the live session, where musicians jam on air was crucial for many artists like myself back in the day as a way of getting exposure.’ Fast forward, 27 years and the live radio session is just as important but something fundamental has changed in the meantime. The Internet gives everyone the opportunity to play live on air from any place and any time as long as the technology works. So Haji Mike & Kingdom Signal, follow in the that fine live radio session tradition this month with a couple of special exclusive shows to launch their new release ‘One Summer’ (Power of Love Records) which came out on May 1st. Dates as follows for the sessions and interviews:

Weds 10th May 17:00–21:00 UTC+02 (4-8pm, UK – 6-10pm, CY) OuttaMiYardRadio Live Session Episode 1 – Live and direct from Kingdom Signal Studios, Corsica Haji Mike & Kingdom Signal play ‘One Summer…’ in full plus dubplates, selections and tunes galore as the two Kings of The Mediterranean Underground meet for the first time on Air.

It has been a long time since I left London…but part of me still lives above Trehantiri Music (RiP) on Green Lanes, that street I knew and loved so well. Radio has been part of my life since around 1979, when I signed up as a volunteer on University Radio Essex (URE). It was nothing like enlisting for the army, although there were some close on air shaves. URE gave me 5 years on air when my first radio and my last sounded entirely different. From there I tried to get into community stations in London, they were pirates at that time but most of the people running them, former hairdressers, blokes who were may be in the rag trade and loved bouzouki music were more obsessed by the finite correctness of speaking the Greek language on air than actually doing radio that was enjoyable and reflective of the diversity in the Cypriot community which I had grown up in. So for a while I did my DJ thing, well for quiet a while and then started releasing 12″ singles around 1990 on my own Kebab Kulture label. That kind of got me back into radio, more so as a guest when various people like Andy Kershaw and the legend himself John Peel featured my music on the Beeb. Community radio at that time tended to shun what I was doing initially, despite airplay on other stations with a wider reach such as BBC, Radio 5 Live, Radio London, KISSFM and WNK. The main community stations back then were LGR and Spectrum. Alot of things changed with 2 songs, ‘Stravroulla’ and ‘Vrakaman’ produced by my mighty mentor Zacharias ‘Sugar’ Hadjishacalli of Spartacus fame. These took off in Cyprus in 1993/4 and the rest is history. With extensive radio play in Cyprus and lots of trips to my homeland, 12 in all that year, I came back and have lived here ever since.

Radio always remained. I worked on Radio Broto, CyBC 2, Astra Radio and Radio Napa, as well as around the world IrieFM (Bermuda), BigupRadio (USA) and InspirationFM (UK) I also made the first music podcasts from Cyprus and more recently got into net based radio from my home based studio with Versionist and OuttaMiYard Radio, where I play every Wednesday 8-10 CY Time.

So when my Chakko DJ friend Marios Avraam, who together with Aggie from InsiprationFM’s GreekShow (the only folks who carried on playing all my songs in terms of Greek/Cypriot based radio from the UK between 1993-present) linked me up with Paul Funksy from Greekbeat Radio I thought why not London, it has been a long time….So my show starts tonight and I am really excited about playing every thing from ‘Pyjames’ by Katsaros from the USA in the 1930’s to the latest Dubophonic out of Cyprus with a touch of I-mitri thrown in, plus a tribute mix to George Michael and some Med exclusives from Kingdom Signal and me …every Friday it is the 5-7pm UK on GreekBeat Radio…Drive time with Haji Mike live from Nicosia to London on BeatzCY…Big thanks to Paul Funksy for the warm welcome…log on here www.greekbeatradio.com

It was around 1988, Conway Hall London, and the newly elected President of The Republic of Cyprus, George Vassiliou was going to make his maiden speech to the London Cypriot community. As a then student activist I found myself in venue putting out the chairs. As soon as they had been laid out a group of around 5 people had littered each chair with a vitriolic leaflet denouncing a ‘Federal Solution’ and opposing the peace talks. It did feel banal, and still to this day, many people that oppose a federal solution seldom have an alternative approach which will be acceptable to all the communities of Cyprus. There are slogans of course, and everyone has slogans. ‘Unitary state’ and ‘European’ political parties who once demanded a ‘European Solution’. A few fanatics, who may have increased lately use the most cowardly one ‘draw a line and build a wall’. But no one has yet to come up with a feasible alternative to a Federal Solution to the Cyprus Problem which would be acceptable to all the communities in the negotiating process. Although the ‘Unitary State’ advocates think they have an alternative, reality is they do not and they know it because it takes two to tango. The ‘European Solution’ supporters, now a bit of a cliché/passing fad, realized that and even changed the name of their political parties.

All of this is all well and good up until a Greek academic finally gave us the answer, the alternative to a Federal Solution. Angelos Syrigos is an Associate Professor of International Law & Foreign Policy at Panteion University Athens. He recently spoke at the memorial to honour Tassos Papadopoulos, the man who partly/allegedly negotiated The Annan Plan and then buried it in the referendum of 2004. Syrigos is also an expert on the said Plan, having written a book on it. So the alternative posed would be to accept Turkey annexing northern occupied Cyprus as opposed to negotiating a Federal Solution. In other words, to spell it out, the assimilation of the north is actually one step further than Partition. This was said at the 8th memorial of Tassos Papadopoulos, a former President of Cyprus, elected to solve the Cyprus Problem on the basis of a Federal Solution. It is good to see the masks finally come off. And the furor from the little party of the centre, the empty-space-between-party-lot, DIKO, following critique on this stance by President Nicos Anastasiades, the reaction. Remarkable echoes of those dark times when they were in power and that post-2004 ambience of constraining any form towards critical thinking. They were in power then, and thankfully now, they are not. What we have yet to realize about DIKO is they want to hold on to power for the sake of it. They want to always be the party of power, in power. Whether they do this alone or with others is immaterial. They will oppose a solution ad infinitum because their power will be eroded and they will have nothing else to talk about.

There is also a common senseness, that everyday allure of DIKO’s position on Cyprus which appeals to people like nicotine to a chain smoker. As an allegedly ‘in-between’ party (whatever that means nowadays) they have naturalised an anti-federal solution through just being obstinate. It’s that everydayness, that routine of their arguments that is disturbing. You switch on the TV and some news presenter probes with a naive question like ‘aren’t we better off, them over there and us over here’. It does sound sweet to some ears, this unofficial DIKO like position which you can probably hear in some coffee shops where usually old men gather to reason on the days events. But whatever way that common senseness is phrased, whether it’s from a coffee shop or from a tie wearing Greek Academic (in a more convoluted way) the bottom line is partition, which is where all these years of deadlocks and dead-end blame games in The Cyprus Talks will eventually take all of us if we pursue the path of pessimism.

So I ask myself, as a refugee without refugee status, as someone born in Marathovouno, who is this Greek academic to tell me and anyone else in Cyprus that the annexation of the north is better than a Federal solution. For over 42 years successive politicians have told us we will ‘go home’. For 42 years you have been lying to the voting public, hiding behind empty slogans, posing you want progress. For 42 years you have hidden your pathetic agenda, herding voters like sheep so you can give part of Cyprus to Turkey so we can be what, ‘united with a Greek motherland’? Is that your next move, stalwarts of DIKO, to proclaim Cyprus is actually Greek and we should just be done with it, side by side with a 150 mile border with Turkey, one side Greek one side Turkish – no more negotiations – a new cold war era? And no doubt, you will all go on, singing the same negative tunes, bellowing the same rejectionist bile, when all people want, at the end of the day is simple, a solution based on what was agreed all those years ago, a Federal State of Cyprus. We cannot carry on fooling ourselves, each other and the world, we agreed on a Federal Solution as far back as 1977 and 1979, either we do it now, or face the realities that Syrigos so poisonously advocates. If the north is assimilated with Turkey, a new chapter begins, but we certainly will not be as relieved as the Greek academic that fears a solution, because sitting in his office from Athens, he will be a lot more comfortable than us.

I have for a number of years been actively engaged, in terms of research, art, music and just opinions on ‘everyday’ representations of people by themselves, of others and through others, like the media and various esteemed authors. It’s the ‘everydayness’ of certain ideas which create stereotypes that contain misrepresentations through ‘common-sense’ ‘facts’ which always calls me to object. Such inaccuracies are usually backed up with the illogical claim of ‘that’s how it is’. Hardly anyone can actually explain logically exactly what ‘that’s how it is’ really means. In other words likes become naturalized and unacceptable. Many politicians do this for a living. Donald Trump is the most loud and reactionary example of this. His views on Muslims and his dangerous claim that he could even kill some one and still be a leading candidate are the lowest levels of intellect (if we can call it that) which a politician has slumped to. At the same time there are ‘everyday’ stereotypes which we often partake in, consume, accept perhaps without even blinking an eyelid. There are also companies and organizations who use stereotypes every day to justify their existence and ultimately sell products and make money. I want to question this in terms of a number of 3 everyday products and brands in Cyprus which depict Africa/Africans/Africaness in clearly derogatory and racist ways. Interesting that all of these ironically come from places which aspire to be alternative/different making their impact more disturbing and questionable because when racism becomes so every day, so subconscious even, it is more harmful as it’s just accepted as the way things are .

.

The oldest one that comes to mind, and I have been complaining about this since the early 1990’s is the logo of Laiko Kafekopteio, an allegedly progressive organization whose name translates into English as ‘The People’s Coffee Grinding Company’ – which is linked to AKEL – The Communist party of Cyprus. Since 1948 the company logo contains a depiction of an African looking ‘bell-boy’ serving different packets of the company’s coffee on a tray. The expression on his face looks shocked, motionless and uncomfortably placed historically. As offensive as the ‘golliwogs’ that used to be on Robertson’s jam jars and very ‘sambo’ looking . One can only assume that despite its allegedly progressive image as a company Laiko’s main shareholder’s must be pretty conservative, insensitive and ‘red-neck’ in their unwillingness to change their logo. Furthermore this stance leaves them frozen in time, trapped somewhere before the pre-civil rights era of the 1940’s when racism was far more entrenched and exclusivist. With a logo likes this, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Steve Biko, Maya Angelou, Public Enemy and Nelson Mandela, never apparently happened.

Then we come to ‘Afrika’ newspaper, which reflects an oppositional view to the establishment and status quo in northern occupied Cyprus. Its owner Sener Levent is outspoken for his criticism of nationalism, occupation and the division of Cyprus. It is baffling, again, how someone so oppositional and allegedly ‘progressive’ can call their newspaper ‘Afrika’ – ‘Africa’. Had the paper been published in Africa or if its content was Afrocentric, fair enough but take one look at the above logo , where the ‘I’ in the word is represented by a sketch of what looks to be a yellow (symbolizing cowardice) faced ape, sitting sideways submissively with its face looking down. Levent made the ‘transitition’ (SIC) in name when ‘Avrupa’ meaning Europe become ‘Afrika’ apparently as a political protest over 10 years ago after he had spent time in detention for expressing views against the former self-declared leader of Turkish Cypriots, the late Rauf Denktash, who lets face it was seldom tolerant to differences of opinion. The newspapers name reflects a wider ‘everyday’ societal stereotype in Cyprus sowed time and time again by people (often politicians) who claim snobbishly that ‘Cyprus is not Africa’ or ‘Cyprus is not like a small country in Africa’ which assumes Cyprus is perfect, a better place than anywhere in Africa . Well folks like you all got it wrong, according to this newspaper ‘Cyprus’ is ‘Afrika’. Whereas in reality Africa is a radically different from such demeaning and degrading imagery and text, and again, the racism of this perverse idea reflects a bygone era of Apartheid and systematic oppression of Africa and people of African origin worldwide.

The final example is the most offensive. It comes from ‘Politis’ newspaper, again allegedly a newspaper that is supposed to be independent politically – a difficult thing in Cyprus – the divided ‘Carob Republic’ which has never been totally free nor independent. Every Sunday ‘Politis’ has a cartoon by Thanasis Papaspyropoulou entitled ‘Sti Hora Ton Zoulou’ which translates in English as ‘In The Country’ or ‘land of the Zulus’ . The image has a caricature of the cartoonist on the left looking a bit smarmy gripping his pencil and pointing his finger rather nonchalantly. Some very poorly designed graphics carry the title with the word ‘Zulu’ done in a self-styled ‘Savanah filled’ font. The word ‘Hora’ is pieced together in a ramshackle way like badly constructed fencing. On the Y (Ypsilon in Greek) of the last letter in Zulu a caricature of a monkey smiles cheekily, with all white teeth shining while holding a rather small banana. We can assume the monkey is about the eat the banana as its half peeled and its size relatively speaking indicates its local produce – Cyprus bananas are tiny compared to the same fruit from anywhere else where the fruit is naturally grown. The content of the cartoon is irrelevant as no matter what is being conveyed this headline logo alone would never be acceptable to Zulu people, who are proud of their culture, identity, roots and traditions. So this one would not wash at well in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and if by chance the cartoonist does find himself some day on a flight to King Shaka Airport Durban I would suggest he thinks twice about stepping off onto the tarmac – just in case someone has seen this ridiculously racist caricature.

What’s disappointing about these three examples is they all come from so-called ‘alternative’ sources. What we expect from overtly racist people and their organizations is to be expected, challenged and rejected accordingly. So I say ‘Laiko’ Coffee, ‘Afrika’ and ‘Politis’ newspapers change your mindsets. Stop pandering to racism through these depictions and be more respectful to Africa, Africans and the richness and diversity of Africaness, and while you are at it maybe read a book by Franz Fanon called ‘The Wretched of the Earth’